The "amusement park" interface metaphor could really be taken places if you start expaning your thinking! Why not a "log flume" like interface? Or themed versions, like "Pirates of the Carribean"? Or for true filesystem navigation thrills, roller-coaster interfaces: the Revolution! Shockwave! The Viper! Superman Ultimate Flight!
All we really -- most of us being web geeks who have bought hosting somewhere -- is filesystem that will mount remote volumes via FTP. Presto, you have portions of your filetree that you can save anywhere.
(OK, OK, to get things really smooth you have to be able to write back to the disk so that you don't have to do the mounting yourself, but still...)
And the funny thing is, they could probably even make some money off of that. Large companies like Toyota and Merill Lynch probably could afford it and would pay for the right to have users taken directly to them. Additionally, Verisign could have a service that guesses close domains built in, giving suggestions to a misguided user while serving a banner ad or two -- or heck, just says "Another service of Verisign".
But that's the problem with modern business thinkers. It's not about providing a service and seeing if you can get paid for it. It's about controlling channels and leveraging that control.
Seriously, I don't even suggest for a moment to anyone I know that they consider using Verisign for anything. They're the antitheses of trust.
They could become an entertainment company: a source of drama and amusement for the tech industry. There's a big gapping hole in the market for tech-industry oriented soap operas.
Start by offering low-bandwidth real media clips of goings on, move up to high-bandwidth, premium, see-it-before-anyone-else scubscriptions. Maybe for extra cash, even be able to influence the plot or participate in being threatened interactively!
It really must take a lot of brainwashing in Poly Sci class, a lot of New York Times reading, or just a lot of good old fashioned Communist sympathizing, to wrap your head around that.
Chinese history in general is about as "byzantine" as anything I've read about. The love/hate relationship with the merchant class alone is frightening. I can tell you this: I wouldn't want to become a prominent figure in Chinese politics or business for anything. Waaay too dangerous for me.
If we're relying on Sun to do save the situation, we may as well all preorder our DRM'd Longhorn-only boxes right now. Everything I've been led to believe by talking to a Sun engineer I know who actually used to work on the OS X native port of the project is that Sun simply does not have it together enough to do this right -- they just don't know how to do product development or product management or marketing for applications.
That's not the point here. The "when it's ready" release schedule in the open source world is a great thing. If MS has learned that lesson, we should all be clapping. MS may never give us open source/libre software, but if they produce good software vs "good enough" software, the world will be that much better.
However... the point here is that Microsoft is creating an incredible window of opportunity here for their competitors. OS X is a better desktop system than Win XP. The open source desktops, perpetually behind, may well have time to catch up. Perhaps more importantly, with no new release of Internet Explorer in the works for the next two or more years, people might start to learn to look for alternatives and download browsers again. We could see a resurgence of competition and innovation in the web browser space -- and we'll probably get more standards compliant browsers in the mix.
In short, yeah, it's great to pillory Microsoft, but the big news here is not the egg on their face. It's the chance to show them up, and take part of their marketshare again, while their product line is aging, their reputation for security is trashed, their licensing policies are painful, I/T budgets are tight, and really, who has actual *affection* left for them anymore?
Re:Dear Comrade McBride....
on
SCO Roundup
·
· Score: 1
One more thing... not enough of this aspect of Mormon theology/social theory is online... wish there was more... but here's an interesting article:
"Work serves two purposes: first, to provide income through the production of goods and services, and second, to develop and utilize one's talents for self-improvement and satisfaction. Winners of lotteries are rarely happy when they quit working to pursue a life of leisure filled with the ability to consume without the necessity to produce. "
Re:Dear Comrade McBride....
on
SCO Roundup
·
· Score: 1
I still don't get the constant references from Gates, McBride et al about Linux being communist.
You know what else I don't get?
Mr McBride, like several directors at Caldera, has worked for Novell and is a devout Mormon. He seemed a natural choice to rescue the firm.
Let's assume for a moment that "devout Mormon" has any relevance. If it's true, when he says "We don't get the whole free-lunch thing," he's not only showing a fair bit of ignorance of open source software and communism, he's also ignoring some pretty basic facts about Mormon cultural history and doctrine. Despite the fact that the puritan work ethic always attached to LDS culture has become somewhat married in modern times to material success, there are some distinctly communitarian periods in the history, and some are still held up as an ideal to work towards. There's LDS scholar/theologian Hugh Nibley's classic essay "Work We Must But the Lunch is Free" which speaks at length to the concept which Darl says he doesn't get. One of the themes of the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants (two parts of LDS cannon) is the contrast between the pursuit of personal wealth at the expense of the rest of society vs a "Zion" society: one where everyone works, but those with more than enough contribute back to the community. And of course, you can find it in the Bible (also in LDS cannon)... for each emphasis on stewardship and property law, you can find another emphasis on community philosphy that starts to get into that "free lunch" kindof stuff Darl doesn't get (Darl: read up on the Jubilee year, and some property habits of the early Christian church, for example).
This leaves aside the basic question of honesty, due dilligence, and integrity, of course. The visible elements of SCO's case seem vacuous; to press suit without merit or racketeer would be outside LDS gospel teachings.
So in general, I don't see a whole lot of behavior on SCO's part that seems particularly in line with Mormon teachings as I understand them. I'm left to wonder if McBride's due dilligence when it comes to his spirtual practice is comparable to the understanding he's displayed of licensing issues.
I work for a small logo design and creative services shop in a Canopy Group office building (emphasis: we're not a Canopy company, we just rent office space here, because the combination of connectivity and nice space makes sense). A call to our ISP verified last Friday's attack was real; the effects were undeniable. We lost the ability to get in or out of the network for much of the day.
That might not seem too significant, until I mention the fact that all our sales happen through the web -- not to mention most of our project management interaction with our customers. Hence, we were paralyzed pretty well by the attack. If Friday was going to be a typical day, we lost $4000-$5000 is sales. Not to mention lost money due to lost productive time on projects.
I don't know how SCO's bottom line was hit, but that was ours, and because we don't have huge padded bank accounts or support of shell-game investors, we really can't afford that.
Not to mention that the bad publicity is real. Sure, some of us here understand the situation and understand the childish folks who undertook the attack only represent a small portion of open source contributors, users, and supporters. But our VP of tech had some negative things to say about them.
Moral of the story: yep, DoS attacks hurt innocent bystanders, even some slashdot fanboys who dislike SCO's tactics as much as the next guy but spent too much time unemployed last year and really don't want their current employer hurt. And transitively, DoS attacks hurt the rep of the Open Source community. Really. If you're one of the people inclined to do something like that, think twice.
I totally agree. I've been practicing producing recordings of myself for about three years now. I have mixed feelings about autotune. I'm a pretty good vocalist without it, but it's saved me some time before. Listen to a song with autotune and song without and a live recording.
While I don't think I totally suck in any of them, there's definitely observable tiers in vocal quality between each of them. And what's more important, for the non-live tracks, the time required to get the vocal perfect was shorter on the auto-tuned version. And there aren't a lot of places where the equation time == money is more strictly true then on the clock in a recording studio.
(Of course we then proceeded to waste the gained time trying to get a good guitar tone...)
Your firewall helps with this? What, by blocking the mail port?
Two words: port 135.
This one has nothing to do with an Outlook vulnerability. It's an e-mail trojan horse. Unless your mail client is unabled to receive files with certain extensions, virus checks them, or executes them under a different permission level (unlikely under Windows)
Last I checked, Outlook's default setting included execution of code.... of course, it's been a while since I've been willing to put up with that.
You represent the most dangerous class of computer users - confident and uninformed.
Underinformed, perhaps, but not un. I haven't had to keep up with the virus details because of a few precautions.
But what the fudge does this have to do with trustworthy computing?
Everything. Aside from the concerns that trustworthy computing is doublespeak for restricted computing, even if you assume that MS is talking about the *right* kind of trustworthy computing, this virus is the latest in a well-populated freakin' pantheon of examples of their failure to be able to provide anything of the sort.
In other words, this is one more chance to ask yourself: why should you trust microsoft?
Side note: I've had several acquaintances attempt to commiserate with me in the last week about various windows viruses. But I don't feel the pain. I'm using Win XP, but a good firewall helps with most of the problems, and you know, Thunderbird is a good email client and a nice way to avoid the Outlook viruses that people erroneously call email viruses.
I had the interesting experience a few months ago of trying to license performing rights for a song, and made the discovery that in general, artists aren't expected to do this -- just the venues where they will perform. It's my understanding that most publishers pay out performance royalties based on statistical sampling; if this is the case, isn't this just another part of the system where the lesser known artists are getting shafted? For example, Chris Ledoux apparently used to play a song by Corri Connors, an acquaintance of mine, which for the most part she received no performance royalties for, because it fell underneath the radar of a statistical sample. Is there a better way?
This is relevant to recorded music as well; we know, for example, that we're already paying blank media taxes, whose proceeds are distributed in this way, and I think it's likely that schemes will be proposed for online distribution and peer-to-peer apps that mirror it.
It's a great scheme, but SLASH'EM isn't vapor. It's up on this server, for example. I've played it a number of times when I get a little bored with vanilla nethack, and it's definitely playable and stable.
(1) Be tough enough that they're not killing you. Of course, if you leave a master lich or higher around long enough, it probably will summon enough meanies to do you in. But if you have at least AC -5 and magic resistance, preferably cold resistance too, you should be able to weather the worst.
(2) Wield silver if you can. Silver saber, dagger, arrows. I can't recall the damage bonus, but it's more than most artifacts will give you. Stormbringer's level drain attack will do nothing.
(3) Liches love to teleport away to the stairs to heal up, then teleport back to threaten you. The minute you see one, see if you can head for the up stairs, and occupy that square. The Lich will teleport around you and you can whack it 'til it's dead.
(4) In general, Liches are good practice for fighting the Wizard of Yendor. He's like them, but meaner.
They have taken the bridge and the firewall. We have barred the ports, but cannot hold them for long. The server shakes. Drums, drums in the deep. We cannot get out. A shadow moves in the dark. We cannot get out... They are coming...
Per License. That's right folks, per license. It's not necessarily the price-per-copy that's the big problem (though IMHO once you break into the thousands you're risking losing the smaller business). It's the fact that you pay this fee for every person. Unless you pirate....
This article has the fundamental flaw of completely ignoring the market place....
He doesn't ignore it. He understands fully that Microsoft and Apple and others own a *huge* chunk of prime virtual real-estate -- the desktop. It's been *the* place to deliver applications since the PC revolution happened in the late 1970's/early 80's, and it's still a place where a lot of software is grown and marketed. And despite the fact that you're sharecropping and marketing on someone else's land, sometimes it's worth it, just like businesses will lease primo real estate. Even if it is sharecropping.
But there's another way to deliver your applications, and that's the Web. And one of his points from the article is that most applications deliver just fine through the web browser's primitives -- even some we tend to worry won't. So the majority of app developers have a choice: they can go desktop, and be (by and large) sharecroppers, or they can deliver via the web and own the farm. It's now a *choice* and Tim points out the advantages of owning the farm. They don't negate the fact that you can profit from sharecropping (you can!), but now that there's an alternative, it's worth considering whether that potential is worth the trade-off.
The real world hyperlink is great, but they still have to work on presentation for the web. I've yet to find more than a handful of sites usable on my phone, and even fewer that have worthwhile content in that category.
Meanwhile, we still have creative directors and PHBs who insist on designing non-liquid websites for IE6 at at least 800px width.
Slashdot Mirror
The "amusement park" interface metaphor could really be taken places if you start expaning your thinking! Why not a "log flume" like interface? Or themed versions, like "Pirates of the Carribean"? Or for true filesystem navigation thrills, roller-coaster interfaces: the Revolution! Shockwave! The Viper! Superman Ultimate Flight!
All we really -- most of us being web geeks who have bought hosting somewhere -- is filesystem that will mount remote volumes via FTP. Presto, you have portions of your filetree that you can save anywhere.
(OK, OK, to get things really smooth you have to be able to write back to the disk so that you don't have to do the mounting yourself, but still...)
And the funny thing is, they could probably even make some money off of that. Large companies like Toyota and Merill Lynch probably could afford it and would pay for the right to have users taken directly to them. Additionally, Verisign could have a service that guesses close domains built in, giving suggestions to a misguided user while serving a banner ad or two -- or heck, just says "Another service of Verisign".
But that's the problem with modern business thinkers. It's not about providing a service and seeing if you can get paid for it. It's about controlling channels and leveraging that control.
Seriously, I don't even suggest for a moment to anyone I know that they consider using Verisign for anything. They're the antitheses of trust.
If this happened, how would wall-street traders and fund-monkeys make money off of the stock market?
They could become an entertainment company: a source of drama and amusement for the tech industry. There's a big gapping hole in the market for tech-industry oriented soap operas.
Start by offering low-bandwidth real media clips of goings on, move up to high-bandwidth, premium, see-it-before-anyone-else scubscriptions. Maybe for extra cash, even be able to influence the plot or participate in being threatened interactively!
It really must take a lot of brainwashing in Poly Sci class, a lot of New York Times reading, or just a lot of good old fashioned Communist sympathizing, to wrap your head around that.
Chinese history in general is about as "byzantine" as anything I've read about. The love/hate relationship with the merchant class alone is frightening. I can tell you this: I wouldn't want to become a prominent figure in Chinese politics or business for anything. Waaay too dangerous for me.
If we're relying on Sun to do save the situation, we may as well all preorder our DRM'd Longhorn-only boxes right now. Everything I've been led to believe by talking to a Sun engineer I know who actually used to work on the OS X native port of the project is that Sun simply does not have it together enough to do this right -- they just don't know how to do product development or product management or marketing for applications.
That's not the point here. The "when it's ready" release schedule in the open source world is a great thing. If MS has learned that lesson, we should all be clapping. MS may never give us open source/libre software, but if they produce good software vs "good enough" software, the world will be that much better.
However... the point here is that Microsoft is creating an incredible window of opportunity here for their competitors. OS X is a better desktop system than Win XP. The open source desktops, perpetually behind, may well have time to catch up. Perhaps more importantly, with no new release of Internet Explorer in the works for the next two or more years, people might start to learn to look for alternatives and download browsers again. We could see a resurgence of competition and innovation in the web browser space -- and we'll probably get more standards compliant browsers in the mix.
In short, yeah, it's great to pillory Microsoft, but the big news here is not the egg on their face. It's the chance to show them up, and take part of their marketshare again, while their product line is aging, their reputation for security is trashed, their licensing policies are painful, I/T budgets are tight, and really, who has actual *affection* left for them anymore?
One more thing... not enough of this aspect of Mormon theology/social theory is online... wish there was more... but here's an interesting article:
/ B_ Kimzey.htm
http://w3.byuh.edu/academics/ace/Speeches/Mckay
"Work serves two purposes: first, to provide income through the production of goods and services, and second, to develop and utilize one's talents for self-improvement and satisfaction. Winners of lotteries are rarely happy when they quit working to pursue a life of leisure filled with the ability to consume without the necessity to produce. "
I still don't get the constant references from Gates, McBride et al about Linux being communist.
You know what else I don't get?
Mr McBride, like several directors at Caldera, has worked for Novell and is a devout Mormon. He seemed a natural choice to rescue the firm.
Let's assume for a moment that "devout Mormon" has any relevance. If it's true, when he says "We don't get the whole free-lunch thing," he's not only showing a fair bit of ignorance of open source software and communism, he's also ignoring some pretty basic facts about Mormon cultural history and doctrine. Despite the fact that the puritan work ethic always attached to LDS culture has become somewhat married in modern times to material success, there are some distinctly communitarian periods in the history, and some are still held up as an ideal to work towards. There's LDS scholar/theologian Hugh Nibley's classic essay "Work We Must But the Lunch is Free" which speaks at length to the concept which Darl says he doesn't get. One of the themes of the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants (two parts of LDS cannon) is the contrast between the pursuit of personal wealth at the expense of the rest of society vs a "Zion" society: one where everyone works, but those with more than enough contribute back to the community. And of course, you can find it in the Bible (also in LDS cannon)... for each emphasis on stewardship and property law, you can find another emphasis on community philosphy that starts to get into that "free lunch" kindof stuff Darl doesn't get (Darl: read up on the Jubilee year, and some property habits of the early Christian church, for example).
This leaves aside the basic question of honesty, due dilligence, and integrity, of course. The visible elements of SCO's case seem vacuous; to press suit without merit or racketeer would be outside LDS gospel teachings.
So in general, I don't see a whole lot of behavior on SCO's part that seems particularly in line with Mormon teachings as I understand them. I'm left to wonder if McBride's due dilligence when it comes to his spirtual practice is comparable to the understanding he's displayed of licensing issues.
Wow! This needs some kind of cool name, like... like...
MIT Everyware, perhaps?
I work for a small logo design and creative services shop in a Canopy Group office building (emphasis: we're not a Canopy company, we just rent office space here, because the combination of connectivity and nice space makes sense). A call to our ISP verified last Friday's attack was real; the effects were undeniable. We lost the ability to get in or out of the network for much of the day.
That might not seem too significant, until I mention the fact that all our sales happen through the web -- not to mention most of our project management interaction with our customers. Hence, we were paralyzed pretty well by the attack. If Friday was going to be a typical day, we lost $4000-$5000 is sales. Not to mention lost money due to lost productive time on projects.
I don't know how SCO's bottom line was hit, but that was ours, and because we don't have huge padded bank accounts or support of shell-game investors, we really can't afford that.
Not to mention that the bad publicity is real. Sure, some of us here understand the situation and understand the childish folks who undertook the attack only represent a small portion of open source contributors, users, and supporters. But our VP of tech had some negative things to say about them.
Moral of the story: yep, DoS attacks hurt innocent bystanders, even some slashdot fanboys who dislike SCO's tactics as much as the next guy but spent too much time unemployed last year and really don't want their current employer hurt. And transitively, DoS attacks hurt the rep of the Open Source community. Really. If you're one of the people inclined to do something like that, think twice.
I totally agree. I've been practicing producing recordings of myself for about three years now. I have mixed feelings about autotune. I'm a pretty good vocalist without it, but it's saved me some time before. Listen to a song with autotune and song without and a live recording.
While I don't think I totally suck in any of them, there's definitely observable tiers in vocal quality between each of them. And what's more important, for the non-live tracks, the time required to get the vocal perfect was shorter on the auto-tuned version. And there aren't a lot of places where the equation time == money is more strictly true then on the clock in a recording studio.
(Of course we then proceeded to waste the gained time trying to get a good guitar tone...)
Your firewall helps with this? What, by blocking the mail port?
Two words: port 135.
This one has nothing to do with an Outlook vulnerability. It's an e-mail trojan horse. Unless your mail client is unabled to receive files with certain extensions, virus checks them, or executes them under a different permission level (unlikely under Windows)
Last I checked, Outlook's default setting included execution of code.... of course, it's been a while since I've been willing to put up with that.
You represent the most dangerous class of computer users - confident and uninformed.
Underinformed, perhaps, but not un. I haven't had to keep up with the virus details because of a few precautions.
But what the fudge does this have to do with trustworthy computing?
Everything. Aside from the concerns that trustworthy computing is doublespeak for restricted computing, even if you assume that MS is talking about the *right* kind of trustworthy computing, this virus is the latest in a well-populated freakin' pantheon of examples of their failure to be able to provide anything of the sort.
In other words, this is one more chance to ask yourself: why should you trust microsoft?
Side note: I've had several acquaintances attempt to commiserate with me in the last week about various windows viruses. But I don't feel the pain. I'm using Win XP, but a good firewall helps with most of the problems, and you know, Thunderbird is a good email client and a nice way to avoid the Outlook viruses that people erroneously call email viruses.
I had the interesting experience a few months ago of trying to license performing rights for a song, and made the discovery that in general, artists aren't expected to do this -- just the venues where they will perform. It's my understanding that most publishers pay out performance royalties based on statistical sampling; if this is the case, isn't this just another part of the system where the lesser known artists are getting shafted? For example, Chris Ledoux apparently used to play a song by Corri Connors, an acquaintance of mine, which for the most part she received no performance royalties for, because it fell underneath the radar of a statistical sample. Is there a better way?
This is relevant to recorded music as well; we know, for example, that we're already paying blank media taxes, whose proceeds are distributed in this way, and I think it's likely that schemes will be proposed for online distribution and peer-to-peer apps that mirror it.
I'll say stop again!
It's a great scheme, but SLASH'EM isn't vapor. It's up on this server, for example. I've played it a number of times when I get a little bored with vanilla nethack, and it's definitely playable and stable.
(1) Be tough enough that they're not killing you. Of course, if you leave a master lich or higher around long enough, it probably will summon enough meanies to do you in. But if you have at least AC -5 and magic resistance, preferably cold resistance too, you should be able to weather the worst.
(2) Wield silver if you can. Silver saber, dagger, arrows. I can't recall the damage bonus, but it's more than most artifacts will give you. Stormbringer's level drain attack will do nothing.
(3) Liches love to teleport away to the stairs to heal up, then teleport back to threaten you. The minute you see one, see if you can head for the up stairs, and occupy that square. The Lich will teleport around you and you can whack it 'til it's dead.
(4) In general, Liches are good practice for fighting the Wizard of Yendor. He's like them, but meaner.
They have taken the bridge and the firewall.
We have barred the ports, but cannot hold them for long.
The server shakes. Drums, drums in the deep.
We cannot get out. A shadow moves in the dark.
We cannot get out...
They are coming...
In this case, it'd be the blue sky of death.
I think it's more of a vehicle for retired pirates.... an ARRR!-V, if you will.
Per License. That's right folks, per license. It's not necessarily the price-per-copy that's the big problem (though IMHO once you break into the thousands you're risking losing the smaller business). It's the fact that you pay this fee for every person. Unless you pirate....
This article has the fundamental flaw of completely ignoring the market place....
He doesn't ignore it. He understands fully that Microsoft and Apple and others own a *huge* chunk of prime virtual real-estate -- the desktop. It's been *the* place to deliver applications since the PC revolution happened in the late 1970's/early 80's, and it's still a place where a lot of software is grown and marketed. And despite the fact that you're sharecropping and marketing on someone else's land, sometimes it's worth it, just like businesses will lease primo real estate. Even if it is sharecropping.
But there's another way to deliver your applications, and that's the Web. And one of his points from the article is that most applications deliver just fine through the web browser's primitives -- even some we tend to worry won't. So the majority of app developers have a choice: they can go desktop, and be (by and large) sharecroppers, or they can deliver via the web and own the farm. It's now a *choice* and Tim points out the advantages of owning the farm. They don't negate the fact that you can profit from sharecropping (you can!), but now that there's an alternative, it's worth considering whether that potential is worth the trade-off.
The real world hyperlink is great, but they still have to work on presentation for the web. I've yet to find more than a handful of sites usable on my phone, and even fewer that have worthwhile content in that category.
Meanwhile, we still have creative directors and PHBs who insist on designing non-liquid websites for IE6 at at least 800px width.